Living Data

Oceanic Sydney

Installation/performance Living Data: Oceanic Sydney, Customs House Foyer, 31 Young Street, Circular Quay, Sydney.
8pm - 9pm Sunday 14 October 2012

Convenors: Caterina Mocciolaand Lisa Roberts
Screen design: Lawrence Wallen
Animation: Lisa Roberts
Dancers: Caterina Mocciolaand Ashley Macqueen
Music: VOA- Catriona Davies and Benn DeMole
Dancers' costumes: Shane Dunn. Musicians' costumes: Catriona Davies

Photo: Stephen Pierce

Photo: Yvette Worboys

PRESS RELEASE

Sydney is under water. Dancers and musicians explore this new world. Observers are immersed in a curious inversion of terrestrial and marine environments. Performers awaken from a technological dream, improvising within scientific data projected onto plankton mesh. They recognise themselves in the rhythms of the sea and find within themselves the primal forms of an ancient choreography. Circling, spiralling and crossing forms combine in dance, music and animation to create a new world where humans reconnect to ancestral beings.

Plankton mesh suspended in the Customs House foyer invites you to feel part of the performance. Immerse yourself in Living Data: algae and other plankton, krill, seals and birds. Find the giant algae, Neptune's necklace, that dances in the rock pools along Sydney's beaches. And where are the humans?

This work is the result of a collaboration between Lisa Roberts and Caterina Mocciola who work with scientists to make visible the data. These artists generate and foster collaborations that spawn new works drawn from disciplines across the arts and sciences.

Lisa is a visual artist and academic. She leads the Living Data project that builds on her research with Antarctic scientists. Drawing the moving human form is the core of her animation practice.

Caterina is an independent dancer and choreographer whose contemporary dance practice is grounded in contact improvisation. Embodied responses shape her real-time choreography.

Collaborating artists are Lawrence Wallen, Ashley Macqueen and VOA. Lawrence is a designer and academic. He is Head of Design at UTS and his practice is drawing and designing large scale structures for public spaces. Ashley is a contemporary dancer whose practice is contact improvisation. He is also a scientist who studies fresh water ecology. VOA is the music duo Benn DeMole and Catriona Davies, known for their positiv-politic hip-hop/pop and atmospheric soundscapes.

Photo: Mike Day

Video production: Lisa Roberts
Cover photo: Mike Day